The history of names is so ancient that no person truly knows the beginning of the story. Since written history began, and before that (oral history) people have clearly been called something.

The sources from which names can be derived are almost endless (especially the more unique names) : nicknames, physical attributes, where they come from, employment, tribes or heraldic connections, and almost every object known to mankind even, for example, fire which inspires the Irish Boys name Aed.

If you are thinking in tracing a family tree, sometimes you have to be quite inventive about the origins. Many early titles were compounds. For instance, the early Norse used the real name of the god Thor along side another element and this resulted in Norwegian Boy names such as Thorbjorn, Thorgeir, Thorkell and so on but this was not limited to boy names and the Norwegian girl names such as Thordis, Thorgunna and Thorhalla also developed.

With the growth of Christianity, certain tendencies in naming routines also developed. Christians were often urged to call their children after saints and martyrs of the church and these in turn often had Roman or Greek roots. Biblical girl baby names such as Hannah were often Jewish, such as Mary and Martha. This is of course only natural as the first Christians lived in the Roman empire, which is on the list of other peoples of the empire that they first commenced to convert non-Jews.

​If you are interested in names then there are a number of excellent articles on this topic, just be careful what you search for.